This six-year-old video from SpaceX is both prescient and pure troll

Six years ago SpaceX had launched its Falcon 9 rocket just twice and fished pieces out of the ocean after each mission. Nevertheless, the company's founder, Elon Musk, decided it was time for a big public reveal of his plans—a fully reusable launch system to significantly lower the cost of access to space.

"Now, we could fail," he said, during a September 2011 event at the National Press Club, transcribed at the time by CollectSPACE. "I'm not saying we are certain of success here, but we are going to try to do it. We have a design that on paper, doing the calculations, doing the simulations, it does work. Now we need to make sure those simulations and reality agree because generally, when they don't, reality wins."

Last week SpaceX won by making reusability a reality when the company launched a previously recovered orbital rocket for the first time. We had largely forgotten about a video that Musk shared during the 2011 news conference, but in hindsight it is rather remarkable to watch today. The company's depictions of how it would reuse the Falcon 9 rocket felt a little like science fiction at the time, but now SpaceX has made significant progress on several aspects of reusability shown.

SpaceX succeeded in landing the first stage of the rocket and reflying it. Moreover, SpaceX has also landed rockets at sea, something the video doesn't show. The company has not yet landed its Dragon spacecraft on the ground yet (it recovers the spacecraft in the ocean), but it has done extensive work to develop the SuperDraco thrusters shown in the video. A land-based return could come in 2019.

Perhaps most notable in the video is the attempt to return the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, which uses its single Merlin engine and landing legs to come to a soft landing on the ground. SpaceX has yet to try this, but Musk has suggested the first attempt to return an upper stage might come later this year, on the inaugural launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket. Finally, the company has also begun trying to recover the rocket's payload fairing, which is not shown in the video.

Put all of this together, and you have nearly 100 percent of a rocket recovered after launch. With just the first stage booster, SpaceX is already 70 percent of the way there. In this sense, the video is prophetic. It is also provocative in its choice of a music soundtrack, Uprising by Muse.

“Fat cats”

To understand the context of this music choice (which one source said was entirely deliberate), consider the state of play in aerospace in 2011. The space shuttle had just retired. NASA had just embarked upon a plan to replace the space shuttle with the commercial crew program, of which SpaceX was among several contenders. Meanwhile, Congress had directed NASA to build the massive Space Launch System rocket with the help of its traditional aerospace contractors. Some of those in Congress didn't appreciate an upstart new space company trying to insinuate itself into the mix.

As an example of the kind of pushback SpaceX got from members of Congress, consider this from Alabama Senator Richard Shelby in 2010, who said SpaceX wasn't even capable of bringing trash back from the space station, let alone carrying humans there. During a hearing about commercial crew funding, Shelby said, "Instead of requiring accountability from these companies, the president's budget proposes to reward these failed commercial providers with an additional bailout."

So along comes Musk and his "failed" company in 2011 with this video and soundtrack. Perhaps the most striking line comes at the very end of the video as the SpaceX logo flashes up, and the song reaches a crescendo of the chorus—we will be victorious. But there are some other eye-catching lines in the song as well:

Rise up and take the power back, it's time that
The fat cats had a heart attack, you know that
Their time is coming to an end
We have to unify and watch our flag ascend

One doesn't have to speculate too hard about who the "fat cats" might be in Musk's mind and whose time of dominance in the aerospace industry is coming to an end. Moreover the line about flags ascending could easily represent the American flag painted onto a Falcon 9 rocket. Finally, the chorus seems to drive home SpaceX's upstart ethos clearly:

They will not force us
They will stop degrading us
They will not control us
We will be victorious

This now largely forgotten video, then, shines a bit of perspective on the mindset of Elon Musk six years ago when he began taking on the big players in the aerospace industry. It still isn't 100 percent clear that SpaceX will be victorious, but the company is coming closer to dominating the global launch market. The uprising appears to be almost complete.

Listing image by SpaceX